- $1 billion Empire State Building IPO: why it won't be like Facebook IPO
- In surprise move, GOP leaders admit defeat in payroll tax battle
- More than 30,000 Germans turn out against anti-piracy treaty ACTA
- Does Obama blueprint reduce budget deficit fast enough? (+video)
- Pentagon budget: Does it pit active-duty forces against retirees? (+video)
Growthology
State Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee, and other Assembly Democrats approach the front of the chamber in outrage as their Republican counterparts cut off debate and voted on the budget repair bill in session at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., early Friday morning, Feb. 25, 2011. Are collective bargaining rights really what workers should be fighting for? (M.P. King / AP)
Are collective bargaining rights really that great?
The Wisconsin fight over public sector unions is an interesting one. The Governor and an apparent majority of legislators are trying to pass a law that would change the way most state employees organize, in addition to financial issues. The touchstone issue is whether workers will keep their collective bargaining rights. At least, that's the way it is being phrased in the media. But I wonder if that phrasing obscures the matter.
Consider the phrasing of this Gallup poll (which was the top story in yesterday's USA Today).
Would you favor or oppose a law in your state taking away some collective bargaining rights of most public unions, including the state teachers union?
Yikes. Even a cold-hearted economist like me isn't in favor of TAKING AWAY stuff from others. Let alone taking away their RIGHTS. That sounds mean, which is why 61 percent of respondents were opposed. No doubt, the response would be different if the question involved trade-offs, which is what real-world choices are about. For example:
Would you favor a law in your state ending collective bargaining for public-sector workers or higher taxes on your children over the next few decades?
or
Would you favor a law in your state ending collective bargaining for public-sector workers so that they could have individual bargaining rights?
or
Would you favor a law in your state ending collective bargaining for public-sector workers so that the state could offer higher salaries to the best teachers?
The fact is that worker rights are important. But I wonder why the issue is not framed in terms of the contrast between individual rights versus collective rights. Clearly, a collective is hostile to the flexibility that would allow merit to be finely recognized and rewarded. No? I just don't understand why a worker in a modern service-sector economy would even want collective rights. I understand their importance for a muscle-driven industrial economy where powerful firms can exploit labor. But America isn't that country, especially not when the employer is a state government. But perhaps I don't know the brutal history of Wisconsin's autocratic rulers.
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Students in the multi-age program at Orangethorpe Elementary School in Fullerton, Calif., work on a program together. Should Americans be alarmed about the state of US education? (HANDOUT/MCT/Newscom)
Is American education getting worse?
No, says Kauffman senior fellow Ben Wildavsky in an outstanding essay on Foreign Policy. And forget that myth about the rest of the world leaving us in the dust:
If Americans' ahistorical sense of their global decline prompts educators to come up with innovative new ideas, that's all to the good. But don't expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age -- there wasn't one.
...
In this coming era of globalized education, there is little place for the Sputnik alarms of the Cold War, the Shanghai panic of today, and the inevitable sequels lurking on the horizon. The international education race worth winning is the one to develop the intellectual capacity the United States and everyone else needs to meet the formidable challenges of the 21st century -- and who gets there first won't matter as much as we once feared.
No one would deny that education is America can be vastly improved, but part of Ben's point is that educational inequalities within the United States matter much more than the ostensible gaps between countries. It's hard to avoid the conclusion, noted by Brink a couple of weeks ago, that education is at the root of many of America's economic difficulties. But arguments premised on alarmism are not an answer.
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Instead of doing extensive planning and market research, many entrepreneurs opt to start doing business and learn as they go. (Photo illustration/Kelly Redinger/Design Pics/Newscom)
An entrepreneur's plan: Trash the plans and dive right in
In the airport on the way back from this conference, I picked up a copy of the current issue of Inc. magazine for the cover story on "How Great Entrepreneurs Think." The article relates the results of a study by UVA Darden School professor Saras Sarsvathy of 45 top entrepreneurs. All were presented with a case study of a hypothetical start-up and then quizzed about how they would run it. Interestingly, she later conducted the same exercise with managers at large corporations. The differences in thinking and decision-making style are instructive:
Sarasvathy likes to compare expert entrepreneurs to Iron Chefs: at their best when presented with an assortment of motley ingredients and challenged to whip up whatever dish expediency and imagination suggest. Corporate leaders, by contrast, decide they are going to make Swedish meatballs. They then proceed to shop, measure, mix, and cook Swedish meatballs in the most efficient, cost-effective manner possible.
So, for example, when one entrepreneur was asked about what market research would be needed, he replied:
"I don't believe in market research. Somebody once told me that the only thing you need is a customer. Instead of asking all the questions, I'd try and make some sales. I'd learn a lot, you know: which people, what were the obstacles, what were the questions, which prices work better."
Here's another quote along similar lines:
"I always live by the motto of 'Ready, fire, aim.' I think if you spend too much time doing 'Ready, aim, aim, aim,' you're never going to see all the good things that would happen if you actually started doing it. I think business plans are interesting, but they have no real meaning, because you can't put in all the positive things that will occur...."
Generalizing from these kinds of attitudes, Sarasvathy concludes that entrepreneurs
do not believe in predictions of any kind. "If you give them data that has to do with the future, they just dismiss it," she says. "They don't believe the future is predictable ... or they don't want to be in a space that is very predictable."
Which means -- segueing now from practice to theory -- that entrepreneurs grasp intuitively the central insight of the great economist F. A. Hayek: that capitalism is a process of discovery. Hayek saw that socialist central planning, then at the height of intellectual fashion, was doomed to founder on the unpredictability of the future. Capitalism, at the time derided for its chaotic duplicativeness, worked precisely because of its messiness: its decentralized process of trial-and-error experimentation is the only viable response to the ineradicable uncertainties of economic life.
Entrepreneurs are Hayekians at the micro level. They don't want to sit back and plan, they want to dive in and discover and learn. They want to experiment: to see what works and what doesn't, to build on the successes and leave the failures behind. Which is exactly what how the larger market order works at the macro level.
None of this is to say that planning is unnecessary. On the contrary, it's vital -- after you've discovered a good idea. To take that idea to scale and execute it efficiently -- in other words, to pump out those Swedish meatballs -- you need planning and lots of it. Which is why successful start-ups turn into big corporations run by professional managers.
Here's Sarasvathy's full case study.
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A Planned Parenthood sign stands outside the building in Sioux Falls, S.D. How much control should the government exercise over abortion providers that receive tax exemptions? (Eric Landwehr / Freelance for CSM / File)
Tax exemptions don't make private foundations public
A word of unsolicited caution to ideological partisans: when arguing a point, do not base your case on a point of principle or theory that you outright reject in other circumstances. This is known as hypocrisy.
For two or three decades, many connected to the world of philanthropy and private foundations have been arguing that the tax exemption enjoyed by private foundations (and the charitable deduction granted to individual citizens) is a government subsidy. This argument is made principally, but not exclusively, by those on the liberal end of the spectrum and has even gone as far as one Congressman declaring that tax exemption is a federal "earmark" to foundations. The exemption/deduction = subsidy argument is made to justify expansive government intrusion into the working of private foundations: mandating types of spending, staff composition, etc. That is, there are two claims at work. The first is that foundations are subsidized through the tax code; the second is that this subsidy makes private philanthropy "public" and therefore subject to public (government) ownership and control.
In other areas of public policy this line of argument is known as "tax expenditure theory"--tax credits and deductions and exemptions are government "expenditures," whether in fact or in financial equivalence. (The Joint Committee on Taxation prepares an expenditure report in which it calculates the "cost" of deductions and exemptions and credits.) It is a long-running debate and many, including myself, have argued against the use of the theory to justify far-reaching public ownership or control of philanthropy. Perhaps not suprisingly, this argument has been made mostly, but again not exclusively, by those on the right.
Now, in the resurrected debate over federal funding of abortion, the ideological markers are reversed: conservatives argue that tax credits and exemptions for certain types of abortion services are really government subsidies and therefore need to be eliminated--or that this justifies expansive government restriction on those services. Those on the left, meanwhile, now say that such elements of the tax code are not subsidies and therefore cannot be made the crutch of this line of argument.
The tax expenditure/subsidy argument will likely never be resolved, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Both sides (of course, it is really all sides or everyone because I can't even tell where the "sides" are anymore in the above arguments) can accept, I think, that an exemption acts as a subsidy, both in financial equivalence (though not perfecty given the frictions and costs of collecting taxes and then redistributing as a subsidy) and in terms of an affirmative government decision to encourage (or discourage) some activity through the tax code. (The tax code has long been a major vehicle for policymaking.) What I disagree with, and what both the left and the right are now doing, is taking this one step further and arguing that this equivalence or this government "decision" justifies further restrictions because that "subsidized" activity is now "public." This is not a permissible line of logic: the right cannot defend philanthropic independence by cabining the tax exemption/subsidy argument and then turn around and use that exact same argument on the abortion issue; the left cannot color all private philanthropy as "public" and then turn around and say tax exemptions are actually not subsidies in the case of abortion. Everyone needs to be more honest about the assumptions underlying their arguments. Like that will ever happen.
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John Pham, right, a program officer with Reserve Inc., reviews the resume of Bob Drake, 63, at an AARP Career event aimed at helping older workers improve their job search, in New York on January 18. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported at 9 percent unemployment rate in January. (Frank Franklin II / AP / File )
Unemployment rate doesn't lie, but payroll data might
An unemployment rate of 9.0 percent in the United States is extraordinarily high by recent historical standards, but that rate is 0.8 points lower in January 2010 than it was two months ago, based on Census data. And yet, the January employment figures show that only 36,000 jobs were created according to the separate payroll data. These are mixed signals, and the media tend to overplay the payroll signal. But I suspect that with the gap being so wide, there will be no avoiding confusion. Here's how to make sense of it.
Based on research I did in 2004, when GWB was president, I am an advocate of Census data and have made the point that payroll data are unreliable during macro turning points. (Something tells me the political interpretations of this research will be mixed signals as well). The unreliability of the payroll has many sources, but the one that makes me suspicious is the phantom jobs counted on payrolls due to turnover, and turnover fluctuates (by an unknown amount) during booms and busts. Census "household" survey data are not subject to that error, nor are they revised. So, believe the 9 percent rate. Payrolls will catch up in the months and years to come with booming growth once turnover accelerates again.
Is this unallyed good news? Unfortunately, no. The unemployment rate is a ratio, pure and simple, with total unemployment on top and the size of the labor force on the bottom. Consider table A-1 from the BLS report, and you'll see the rate decline is driven half by the denominator (a contracting labor force) half by the numerator (fewer unemployed) -- which have both dropped by about 1 million. Total jobs, however, is the same as it was in September.
Jan 2011 -- 139,323 employed / 153,186 in labor force
Sep 2010 -- 139,378 employed / 154,124 in labor force
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The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on the link above.
A man shops for an oven at a Home Depot store in New York in July 2010. Guest blogger Brink Lindsey writes that GDP per capita should be considered in measuring economic success. (Shannon Stapleton / Reuters / File )
Is median income a good indicator of economic progress?
In responding to reviews and criticisms of his new e-book, Tyler Cowen digs in and claims that median income growth (or rather, the relative lack thereof) is the telling indicator of U.S. economic performance in recent decades. From a rhetorical perspective, his insistence is certainly understandable: the divergence between median income trends pre- and post-1973 is indeed dramatic. But from an analytical perspective, does his focus really make sense?
Perhaps, if the idea is merely to substantiate the claim that living standards for ordinary Americans are improving less rapidly than they did in the past. Now while it's possible to debate this claim, I'm not interested in doing so at present. What I care about now is scrutinizing Tyler's argument that this slowdown in the growth of living standards is due to a general slowdown in innovation -- to the arrival, in his words, at a "technological plateau." And on this important issue, I believe Tyler's insistence on looking at median income -- and dismissing the greater relevance of GDP per capita and productivity -- is misguided.
Here is the issue. Median income growth since 1973 is worse than GDP per capita growth over the same period, which in turn is worse than productivity growth (at least since the mid-'90s). The productivity stat's directly contradict the alleged existence of a technological plateau, and Tyler will need to do a much more convincing job of picking apart those productivity numbers if he wants his argument to fly. Meanwhile, the disparity between median income and GDP per capita points to a rival explanation of sagging median income growth. Maybe we're living through a cultural lag, not a technological plateau.
The reason median income hasn't kept up with GDP per capita is that income gains since 1973 have accrued disproportionately to high earners. In other words, we've experienced a big increase in income inequality. And why is that? If we're focused on the growing gap between incomes at, say, the 90th percentile and the 50th percentile (as opposed to the stratospheric gains at the very tippy top of the income scale), a major reason is the increased return to skills due to sluggish human capital development. The continuing increased demand for people with college degrees (or the skills for which a degree serves as a useful proxy) has not been matched by corresponding growth in people with those degrees and skills, and thus the wage premium for college grads opened up after 1980 and has persisted stubbornly since then. As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz put it, in the race between education and technology, technology has been winning handily.
And this really shouldn't be that surprising. Once we exhausted the supply of "smart but uneducated kids" that Tyler writes about, further gains in educational attainment and human capital development would have to overcome deep-seated, class-based differences in values and childraising philosophy. Since the big economic payoff (in the form of the college wage premium) of overcoming this class divide only dates back about 30 years, or a single generation, it's no wonder that these differences are still with us.
Now this cultural lag is a formidable obstacle to future growth prospects, but it's a very different one than Tyler is highlighting. It's not that we're running out of good ideas; it's that we're running out of people who can use good ideas to best advantage.
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Protesters gather in Cairo on Feb. 1. Do young people in Egypt see a future for their country and economy? (Khalil Hamra / AP )
The trajectory of Egypt's economy
Zachary Karabell in the Wall Street Journal:
What allows China to thrive for now (and Brazil and India and Indonesia, among many others) is that its citizens believe they have some control over their material lives and a chance to turn their dreams into reality. They have an outlet for their passions that is not determined for them, and an increasing degree of economic freedom. The young in Egypt ... believe that they have no future, and in many ways they are correct.
Yes. Karabell qualifies this: "These realities alone don't cause revolution. Many countries are poor and quiet." And we can definitely argue over the link between democracy and economic development. Karabell cites "economic freedom," but the countries he names--China (135th), Brazil (113th), India (124th), and Indonesia (116th)--aren't exactly outstanding performers on the Index of Economic Freedom (out of 179 ranked countries). We could easily flip Karabell's argument around--the economic outlet for the people's energy in China could eventually prove astoundingly insufficient. (Tunisia, ranked 100th in the Index, has a higher per capita income than each of these countries save Brazil.)
But Karabell points to something broader than simply a mechanical link between political freedom and a given level of income: the direction of change, or the economic trajectory. This seems to matter more than the existing state of affair. Hence the reason we have highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship in nations such as Pakistan: it not only offers a route to economic growth but also helps to satisfy the human dignity dimension of economic activity.
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Supporters of a Pakistani religious party rally to support Mumtaz Qadri, who shot and killed Pakistani governor Salman Taseer, in Lahore, Pakistan, Jan. 17. Placards carry pictures of Qadri, demanding his immediate release. Can entrepreneurship accomplish what decades of aid have not? And even if so, how can America support it? (Chaudary / AP)
Can entrepreneurship save Pakistan?
The tragic assassination of Salman Taseer, governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, once again raises the difficult question of the links between economic opportunity, stagnation, and radicalism. Our recent work on Expeditionary Economics proceeds in part on the premise that economic growth is an integral part of social stability and national security for any country. We reject, however, any simplistic link between poverty and terrorism. As Joshua Foust has sardonically observed: "luckily, wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia never promote terrorism."
In this sense, Pakistan presents a challenge and an opportunity (or maybe those are the same thing). The country's economy is in dire straits and the running subtext in the aftermath of Taseer's killing has been that the Pakistani government subsequently rejected IMF demands to appease any further radical violence. It remains to be seen if that will work, but it seems unlikely that the IMF and international community will cease providing aid to a country as geopolitically vital as Pakistan simply because the country broke its pledge on fuel prices. What is more certain is that the country needs economic improvement, quickly. The flood of aid money into the country over the past two or three decades has not reduced poverty and has helped to further entrench the elite's control (particularly the military's) over the economy. The pressing question here is, can entrepreneurship save Pakistan's economy and, thus, save the country from going over a cliff?
Many people think so. Nadeem Ul Haque, now Deputy Minister for the Planning Commission, has written extensively and eloquently on the promise of entrepreneurship, particularly in the face of the country's growing "youth bulge." Governor Taseer himself told the Financial Times not long before his assassination: "Our youth are radicalised not because of ideology but because there are no opportunities. You give jobs to the young people and you begin to overcome the nuisance of the mullahs."
Such propositions are intuitively appealing, but difficult to prove in anything but a messy and uncontrolled environment. The promise of entrepreneurship is not simply material--increased living standards, a growing economy. As Kauffman president Carl Schramm has observed, in a neat twist on Marxist thought, entrepreneurship allows the people of a country to own the economy. It brings material benefits but also a greater sense of dignity, of control over one's destiny. It offers a source of mobility outside the stultified channels of politics and religion.
We cannot say that entrepreneurship or economic growth are panaceas to the problems of radicalism. The well-known preponderance of engineers, for example, among some terrorist organizations should give pause to any temptation to draw mono-causal links. (This link apparently may have something to do with the type of ideology and the correspondence between different disciplines of study.) But what is absolutely clear is that foreign aid, whether through international financial institutions like the IMF or through the U.S. military, has done little for the economic prospects of Pakistani citizens. Entrepreneurship may be the best answer. The next, more difficult question, of course, is: ok, so what do we do now?
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Richard Morris (l.) and Chris Dalton (r.) hold a modified flag during a Tea Party rally at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Jan. 17. Much of the anti-big-government rhetoric used by Tea Partyers echoes language of anti-federal-government pamphleteers arguing against ratification of the Constitution, says guest blogger Dane Stangler. (Steve Helber / AP)
Does Sarah Palin know where Tea Party rhetoric comes from? asks guest blogger Dane Stangler
The power of the federal government,
exercised without limitation, will introduce itself into every corner of the city and country. It ... will enter the house of every gentleman, watch over his cellar ... preside over the table, and note down all he eats or drinks; it will attend him in his bed-chamber, and watch him while he sleeps; it will take cognizance of the professional man in his office or his study; it will watch the merchant in the counting-house or in his store; it will follow the mechanic to his shop and in his work, and will haunt him in his family and in his bed; ... and finally ,it will light upon the head of every person in the United States. To all these different classes of people and in all these circumstances in which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them will be GIVE! GIVE!
You would be forgiven if you guessed that this passage came out of recent rhetoric from the so-called Tea Party. It is taken, however, from one of the more grandiloquent passages of the famous antifederalist Brutus during the heated debates over the proposed federal Constitution in 1787-88.
Which makes one wonder: if it were transported back to 1787, would the Tea Party have rejected the Constitution that today it professes to love and defend? Most likely, yes.
This doesn't make their passion any less genuine, and it certainly doesn't mean that we should ignore the Constitution. I firmly believe the Constitution should be brought to bear on contemporary debates. But simplistic references to originalism and the Constitution as totemic touchstones are often historically confused and generally unhelpful, particularly when people have little idea about the substance of the debates over the Constitution when it was proposed and what they are defending (or rejecting).
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Tenth-graders Aubrie Collins (l.) and Lindsay Moore (r.) check their samples as they study acid and base solutions at the Jefferson County International Baccalaureate School in Irondale, Ala., in this 2005 file photo. The AP Biology exam is facing a major overhaul. What does that mean for biology instruction in high school, middle school, and even elementary school? (Charles Nesbitt / Birmingham News / AP / File)
Just when I wanted to hate ... Biology
[Editor's Note: Guest blogger Tim Kane first wrote this post on January 11.]
The horrifying and sad news of the killing spree by a deranged gunman, I believe his name is Loughner, who targeted an impressive young Congresswoman, a judge, a little girl, and many others, has flooded the news. I've read a fair amount, but after a dozen articles, the mind reels. Surely, other news merits our attention as well. That's hard to find.
Today, it seems the dominant storyline is about the appropriateness of blaming political rhetoric, map targets, reading lists, talk radio, with the ever reliable Paul Krugman being tripped up by the ever reliable Greg Mankiw (I'll leave it to you to assess in which way these economics bloggers are reliable).
I'll avoid any discussion of the now three-named killer. I'll skip "alleged" by the way, given that I live in reality where eyewitness accounts of one person causing the death of another need not be preceded by "alleged." Suspension of disbelief resides comfortably in 21st century overlegalized courtrooms and fantasy movies, but not here. But I digreess. This post is not about the killer, the killing, or the blame game, but about the difficult quest for a news safe haven. I'll note just for fun that the reliably interesting SLATE has multiple commentaries on the blame game, taking all sides. (I'd link to them normally, but that would counter my intentions in this post).
I wondered if even the New York Times would be overrun with the Tucson tragedy, took a gander online today, and was delighted. You have to admit, no matter what else you might say about the old gray lady, she is deep. She is a safe haven, with a vegetarian side menu in a world of red meat. I could say the same about the WSJ, but I read that so regularly that I didn't appreciate it today the way I appreciated the Times.
So, did you know that AP Biology is about to be radically reformed? Neither did I. Nor does my son yet know, though he will be fascinated and furious to learn as he is taking (suffering through) AP Bio this year. Thanks, NYT. Great article.
Next month, the board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology as well as United States history — with 387,000 test-takers the most popular A.P. subject. A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. In biology, a host of more creative, hands-on experiments are intended to help students think more like scientists.
The changes, which are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year, are part of a sweeping redesign of the entire A.P. program. Instead of just providing teachers with a list of points that need to be covered for the exams, the College Board will create these detailed standards for each subject and create new exams to match.
... The new approach is important because critical thinking skills are considered essential for advanced college courses and jobs in today’s information-based economy. College administrators and veteran A.P. teachers familiar with the new biology curriculum believe the changes could have significant reverberations for how science is taught in introductory college classes and even elementary school classrooms, and might bring some of the excitement back to science learning.
... College Board officials say the new labs should help students learn how to frame scientific questions and assemble data, and the exam will measure how well they can apply those skills. When the new test is unveiled in 2013, biology students will need, for the first time, to use calculators, just as A.P. chemistry and physics students do. The board plans to cut the number of multiple-choice questions nearly in half on the new test, to 55. It will add five questions based on math calculations, and it will more than double the number of free-response questions, to nine.
“There won’t be any more questions like: here is a plant, and what is this tissue?” says Professor Uno of the University of Oklahoma, who is helping to decide what will be asked. Instead, early samples show that the multiple-choice questions will be more complex. They will require students to read short passages, or look at graphs, and pick the answers that explain why something happened or that predict what will occur next.
One sample essay question provides a chart with the heights of plants growing in either sunlight or shade and a graph that misinterprets the results. Students must decipher what went wrong, re-plot the data and design a better experiment to determine which grew faster.
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